"Christmas Creep" Photo Gallery Call For Entries

Christmas is threatening to swallow all the other holidays until there is nothing left! Help! This “holiday season” we’re asking our readers to document a phenomenon called “Christmas Creep.”

Have you seen Christmas decorations next to Halloween ones? Christmas sales in October? Christmas sales in July? Christmas decorations up in businesses before Halloween ones?

Have you been annoyed by this? Please take pictures of the worst examples of Christmas Creep that you can find and submit them to the Consumerist Flickr Pool. Make sure to tag them “Christmas Creep” and share where and when you took them, and how the Christmas Creep made you feel.

We should push for a national law that any store that puts up Christmas Items before Dec 1st will have the executive staff of the corporation locked in a giant room full of wild ferrets and a fixed loop of the chipmunks Christmas CD playing.

This just continues to undermine and cheapen the entire purpose of the season and replace it with a orgy of corporate in your face sales.

I know this crap shouldn’t bother me but it just does. I was raised in a Jewish family and have since defected from every and all forms of religion. So christmas has never meant anything to me, and the season has always disgusted me. I get bothered by this xmas junk being shoved in my face every where I go, I get bothered by wal-mart insisting that I must be told to have a merry xmas, I get bothered by nonstop xmas music in any stores I shop in, and I get bothered by people who want a white xmas, because not only do they think that we all celebrate it, but they think we all drive 4×4 SUVs and just love driving around in that crap. I’d happily give up the Chanukah presents I still receive from my family (I may not believe, but I still give and get, people like presents) to see all of the commercialism….EVERYTHING disappear into thin air. I’d love to see November and December (and now October for that matter) be treated just like any other month. I’d much rather see retail employees get to spend time with their family on their respective holidays (ideally, there’d be no religion thus no holidays, but I can’t have everything) rather than spend it working shitty hours so a bunch of parents can spend thousands of dollars on Playstations, Furbys and Tickle Me Elmos. I wish that the people in the stories behind the holidays could come alive for one day and just knock some fucking sense into the general public because I don’t think, assuming they were ever real, living people at some point in time, this is what they had in mind.

Or maybe I’m just bitter because I worked 4 holiday seasons in a Target store…..who knows. I think that could turn Jesus Christ himself into the goddamn Grinch

Christmas is not allowed to begin until you see Santa in the Thanksgiving Day parade. Its the rule…otherwise when I was little my parents would have had my christmas list in August, right after my birthday…so the rule was I had to wait ’til Santa showed up. Now it seems that August isn’t too far off.

Well, that’s a craft store…that’s different. If someone takes it seriously enough getting together their decorations could conceivably take months. I don’t see that being any worse than someone spending a few months on a Halloween costume.

You’ve got some good points there, but personally, I think all that is what makes the Christmas season great. I’m not religious, but my family’s always been Christian… I assume (I really don’t know considering we never went to church), but for some reason I’ve come to love all this random Christmas crap because it reminds me of the good, fun Christmases that have come before.

As you said, you, on the other hand, have had bad experiences with Christmas before, so all this gives you a bad feeling rather than the good feeling I get. Either way, I still agree that the total commercialization of Christmas and the frenzy that goes on is ridiculous, and if I was a real Christian I’d be appalled that people no longer remember what Christmas is all about… the birth of Jesus or something like that.

I disagree with you on the point of Christmas being shoved down everyone’s throat. You don’t seem like one of those people who want to sue because someone at WalMart told them “merry Christmas,” but you seem to be half way there… I take the stand: If you don’t like it… ignore it,” you’re a minority and minorities are never recognized in the proper way, but there really isn’t a whole lot that can change that… I think it’s even more rediculous that people can’t say merry Christmas anymore because people will get “offended” and sue…

Three weeks ago, an employee at our local Lowes was putting out the Christmas decorations when we went to look for pots for some of our houseplants. Unfortunately, guess what they’d moved away into the back to make way for the decorations?

@yg17: I’m not Jewish, and I totally agree with you. I’m so sick of the same music played over and over and over again everywhere I go by October, that I’m almost insane by the time December actually rolls around. The same songs, the same imagery, the same monotonous crap everywhere, all urging everyone to spend, spend, spend, because it’s not Christmas without a pile of debt and extreme nausea.

Last time I went to Wal*Mart (a week or so ago) They had those light-up reighdeer to be put in the front lawn.
You’d think in 85 degree weather* people would wait a bit before jumping the Christmas frrggin’ bandwagon. Halloween Candy’s on clearance already. Sickening, just… augh.

*Note: I live in Florida. Thunder storms, humid weather, and RAIN. People are just insane, I swear.

One of Michigan’s claim to fame (besides government shutdowns) is Bronner’s (www.bronners.com) – the “World’s Largest Christmas Store”. When I stopped by in July on a road trip, I was not only amazed at the 50,000+ Christmas items, but at the people buying it by the cartful! Not only that, the place was packed! Christmas creep is not new – Michigan started the trend (for once!) in 1945!!!

It’s been catalogues so far this year… I got the “gift edition” of our wholesalers’ catalog (Ingram Booksellers) well over a month ago. (In Ingram’s defense, wholesalers do have to lead retailers by at least 60 days. But still.) And then this week, three kitschy gift catalogues. Ew. Of course, on this front, Jezebel scooped you weeks ago.

I am so blessed, living in a town with not one big box store. But I have a perverse desire now to stroll down to the variety store tomorrow and see if they have their first Christmas bits up between the Halloween stuff and the pool toys clearance.

I work at big mall in Cincinnati and in our food court is a Great Steak and Potato Company. Last week while on my lunch break with a fellow co-worker we noticed a sign that they were priding hanging from their cash register. It read ” 90 shopping days untill Christmas, better hurry up!”
it scared the crap out me, to think I have 90 days now lets go people go!

Lowe’s here (Omaha ‘burbs) had the majority of their Christmas crap out a week and a half ago. Fake trees and everything.

Michael’s and other stores that cater to crafty types don’t really count IMO, as they’re aimed at people who have to prepare for holiday crafts shows.

The worst/earliest I’ve ever seen in regular retail was in a local Wal-Mart several years ago. July 5. July friggin’ FIFTH.

The smoke had hardly cleared from the fireworks, and they actually had a small area of Xmas lights out. Went back the next week and was told that they’d had a number of complaints, and put them in back ’til a more reasonable time.

Christmas stuff was out in Big Lots discount stores in August, before the Halloween cr@p. No picture, but last week there was a six-foot tall, loudly laughing animated skeleton only one aisle away from the Xmas decorations. Gaaaaaaaah!

Now that my kids are grown, I just don’t do any “traditional” holidays any more…the hype has ruined all of them for me.

As for the Xmas lights, around here people use the clear ones to wrap trees for exterior lighting, so they’re on sale all year. But would someone please tell my stupid neighbor that multicolored, blinking icicle lights really need to come down in January…or at least turn the friggin’ things OFF…!

I suppose as long as people like my neighbor are buying, the stores will be selling…

One day over the summer I was in a certain corporate coffee shop. I was sitting there reading, when I noticed that the music had changed from their usual stuff to Christmas songs. In July.

I actually went up to the counter and asked what was going on. It turned out to be a couple of bored employees trying to have some fun…but I left soon after. It surprised me to have such an aversion to hearing that music, but I couldn’t sit there and listen to it!

I’m more offended right now that someone in my neighborhood had their house decorated for Halloween by Sept. 10th. Let’s get a jump on every holiday so we are bored with it by the time it arrives. No wonder you see Xmas trees on the curb by 5 pm on 12/25. Does anyone realize that date is only the 1st day of Christmas?

Yeah, as others have pointed out, we’re too late for this photo contest to be really interesting. Late summer was when some mainstream merchants began converting aisles to Christmas merchandise. Another reason not to go shopping! Bleah.

About 10 years ago, I used to work in visuals (dress mannequins, decorate the store, etc.) at JC Penney. The trailer that held our Christmas decorations all year ’round would come the last week in September, and we’d have to unload it and have everything up by the first week in October. I remember this vividly, because for 2 years I spent the weekend of my birthday (10/5) hanging up fake pine swag and ironing red and green polyester tablecloths.

Just this past weekend, I took my 4 year old to BJ’s, where the only thing separating the one Halloween aisle and the 3 Christmas aisles was an aisle of toys (presumably for xmas). On our way out of the store, my daughter quipped, “That was better than going to the playground!”

@Zipway: I know it’s because they’re launching a revamped radio station here in Pittsburgh, but 93.7 is playing all xmas music this week until their new launch at 5pm on 10/5. Which is still an improvement over the “Man Station” BS they had for the last few months – all hick, right-wing syndicated talk shows, all the time. Boring.

On Sept. 26 we were at JCPenney’s and saw the [pathetically small] Xmas section was up – ornaments, decor and entertaining stuff, OH MY! No pics :( Won’t be back there any time soon either. Sorry!

@traciedesigns: Hah, I just posted about JCP! When I went back on 10/29 there was a woman with some clip-on bird ornaments in her hand, asking where the kiddie Halloween costumes were. They were on a pillar. The Xmas stuff was more easily found than Halloween! In SEPTEMBER!

I think Hobby lobby beats everyone (besides Christmas stores), the Hobby Lobby by my house has their Christmas stuff up in July! You can have Santa wearing a 4th of July outfit! I gotta get to the store and take a picture!